The invention is based on the fundamental problem of incompatibility of data of different applications or software packages, respectively. Many programs comprise their own data format for internal processing of data. But this is rarely readable by other programs for processing. The user's problem is to transport any data from application A to application B, generally the data formats of applications A and B being unknown to him. The data to transport are in most cases databases, but there could be also application data in the widest sense, e.g. textual data, CAD data, sound formats, spreadsheet programs, and so on.
To realize the above mentioned data transfer, modern and flexible programs offer the possibility to read data in the very common formats and to process them further in their own format. To make an exchange between different applications possible, for example also from different operating systems, some software packages provide import and export functions in ASCII format or in another usual format.
Beyond this there exist many utility programs, which allow data conversions from one format A to another format B. Those programs have implemented a fixed predefined conversion algorithm, which corresponds to the respective application. Then, the user may choose, between which data formats A and B the program should realize a conversion. Those utility programs could partially recognize the kind of the file, or the kind of the application A, respectively, automatically through simple characteristics in the fileform, as for example the fileform and fixed information structures and version marks in the file itself.
A special method for data conversion is already known from DE 41 28 940 A1. With the help of this method, print-prepared digital data from a document generated at a terminal of a data processing system containing text and/or graphic software are converted into facsimile specific transfer data. This method replaces the complicated, time consuming and erroned method to print a document generated at a terminal of a data processing system with a connected printer and afterwards to scan the paper-printed document through an optoelectronic device of a facsimile system. Then, the scan data of the optoelectronic device is facsimile specific coded and transfered.
The conversion programs integrated in the applications as well as independent utility programs for data conversion both have the disadvantage that only a limited selection of data formats is available, which can be converted by the fixed algorithms of the program. These conversions usually do not consider the element contents and the logic therebetween, as for example character contents and character length, language aspects, existence rules, element transformations, language room, element patterns and element interpretations. Besides, most of the data formats are not standarized very well, and many applications comprise their own data structures. The data elements are optimized for the source application and could cause errors while being processed in the target application, which have to be corrected large-scale manually by the user or even make a further processing of the data impossible.